


Favours

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 04, Gen, Gerry is very tired, Introspection, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Needs a Hug, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Prompt Fill, Short One Shot, narrator is a ghost, when necromancy goes wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26535247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: Nothing else ever worked the way it was supposed to in Gerry's life. Why should it work out in death?Becauseapparently, he now owed Jon a favour.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 110





	Favours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeamstressShanked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeamstressShanked/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "Don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you." In which Season 4 ends up going... a little differently.
> 
> This broke my personal "fewer than 800 words doesn't count as a standalone" rule so it's getting posted. 
> 
> Thank you for reading and for kudos'ing/commenting. I really appreciate the feedback. ♥

“…y-you owe me one, Gerry,” Jon muttered. “Rest in, uh… Just rest.”

 _I’ll be damned,_ thought Gerry, as he felt the flames consuming what remained of his physical body. _He actually did it. Cheers, Jon._

And then he waited to be really, finally, unusably dead.

Didn’t work like that, of course. Why would it? Nothing else ever worked the way it was supposed to in his life. Why should it work out in death?

Because _apparently_ , he now owed Jon a favour.

Gerry glared at the crumbled ashes of his page, lying at the bottom of the Archivist’s wastepaper bin. The Archivist himself was nowhere to be found; he had cleared out while the fire still burned.

Fine. When Jon came back, he’d give him a last lecture on esoteric bullshit and then maybe, _maybe_ , then he could just go.

Jon didn’t come back.

And Gerry couldn’t leave the Archives. He wasn’t sure if he was bound to them or bound to the Archivist, but either way, Jon’s words had trapped him here and he was Not Thrilled.

Jon’s coworkers straggled in now and then, and he caught pieces of the story. The Unknowing – they’d actually stopped it. But two people had died and Jon was… not quite dead? Gerry wasn’t clear on the details and it wasn’t like he could _ask_ anyone. Couldn’t even nudge a pen off a table or make a tape recorder start randomly playing The Clash, anything, just to get someone’s attention.

He’d have even considered a Ouija board, if any of the assistants had been stupid enough to bring one inside. But none of them had known about his page, of course. And even if they had, they didn’t seem like the sort of people who’d be busying themselves trying to contact the dead.

If anything, they seemed more pissed that Jon _wasn’t_ dead.

Except Lukas’s assistant, though. Gerry wasn’t sure what to make of him, and didn’t care to try. It wasn’t smart to spend much time thinking about the Lonely.

Being dead didn’t hurt anymore, at least. But it was still pretty fucking boring, being stuck in the Archives with nothing to do, no one to talk to, and feeling all the influences of the various dread powers swirling around the place like hot winds, all with their own reeking smells. So now all he had to do with his time was sit… stand… ugh, _exist_ around the place until the Archivist got tired of his coma and just died already.

And then one day, he was back. Upright and talking and looking like eight different kinds of hell, and emphatically no longer human. _Poor sod,_ Gerry found himself thinking.

Except no, he’d said that aloud. And now Jon was looking around in panic, like he’d just heard a—

Huh. Okay then.

He tried again, saying Jon’s name, close to his ear, far away, even shouting directly into his face. That never worked, but Gerry picked up very quickly on two things: Jon couldn’t hear anything while he was recording now, and he was most likely to hear Gerry immediately after taking a statement.

After feeding.

He stopped trying as hard, after that, to talk to Jon. He didn’t want to add to the strain, didn’t want to be an additional burden. Instead, he confined himself to taking little ‘sips’ of energy, here and there, building of a reserve in case of emergencies, and occasionally, giving himself the comfort of laying an insubstantial hand on Jon’s shoulder, when the battered Archivist looked like he needed a friend.

Gerry had always told himself that he didn’t pick up strays. But it was a hard-learned habit, because the strays were always the ones he fell for the hardest.

The next several months were… ‘weird’ didn’t feel like it had enough weight behind it to be the right word, but it was the only one Gerry had. Wasn’t like he could look up alternatives. He watched Jon sinking deeper into what he’d called the ‘avatar’ state, watched him fight tooth and nail to hang onto what he had left of himself.

It was a losing battle. Gerry had seen it before. Beholding had never gotten so deep into Gertrude, of course, but there had been others, serving other powers. It never ended well. But he’d never seen anyone struggle and kick and bite the eye feeding it the way Jon did.

So when the Hunters turned up, right at the worst possible moment, looking for _him_ , Gerry’s reaction was more a foregone conclusion than a planned attack.

With the Institute’s own Hunter snarling at Julia and Trevor, Gerry poured the power he’d been storing for all those months into his hands. He closed them on Jon’s shoulders and jerked him back out of the line of fire. And then quickly clapped one very substantial, very tattooed hand over the yelp that Jon was about to let out.

Gerry’s lips were right by Jon’s ear, and this time, when Jon shivered, he knew Jon had heard him. **_“Don’t move, Archivist. I owe you this one.”_**


End file.
